During a hilariously awkward first date early in The Shrouds, Karsh reveals that the inspiration for the technology came (in part) from his wife’s religious beliefs. In Judaism, he explains, the deceased is to be buried (rather than cremated) so that the soul has time to separate itself from the body and move on. The soul stays in the coffin with its body, watching over its physical form until it no longer recognizes that body as a part of itself, and can make the journey to the next world. What’s fascinating about this is that Karsh’s Shrouds give him that same ability. His addiction to watching over her corpse, documenting and cataloging every change in her physical condition is a haunting parallel to what Becca‘s soul is meant to experience alone, and the first indication that Karsh might not be the loving husband Becca’s obituary claimed him to be.
Karsh‘s longs for his wife’s body like a phantom limb. After spending a life together, her being is reduced to nothing more than a collection of skin and bones that he can see but not touch. In his dreams, he is visited by memories of Becca that recall their final days together but always from the perspective that she is already gone. There are embarrassingly frank admissions about the tiny details of her form that he craves. He might never have had the courage to admit that he like one of her breasts more than the other but by sharing these thoughts with her ghost it’s almost sweet how honest and raw he is with her. But the more he is visited by Becca, the more he talks about her body but never Her, or how the cancer is truly villainous for what parts of her it takes from him (not to mention that she only every appears to him naked), doubts about Karsh’s virtue gradually tarnish how we see him. [Heads up, Spoilers Ahead!]
Obsession (or rather, obsessiveness) is the fuel that drives the engine of The Shrouds‘ storylines, and it isn’t limited to just Karsh. His brother-in-law Maury (Guy Pearce, The Brutalist), a brilliant programmer but a terminally jealous paranoid schizophrenic, lost his official in-law status after Terry divorced him to pull the rip cord on his endless accusations of infidelity. Later in the film it’s revealed that he played a key role in the GraveTech attack, fueled solely by his unfounded suspicion that Karsh was sleeping with Terry. They do eventually hook up, and exchange some of the strangest dirty talk of the year, but that’s beside the point. Maury maintained a destructive ownership over Terry’s body that drove his obsessions and ruined his relationships, which Karsh is clearly also trying to maintain over Becca even in death. We have no way of knowing what Karsh was like while Becca was alive, but if how he treats her corpse is any indication, he and Maury probably have a lot in common. Becca just happened to make a more permanent exit from her obsessive husband than Terry.
In his dreams, Karsh is only ever seated in bed, lamenting about how impossible it is to have sex with Becca now that her body belongs to the Doctor’s and their destructive treatments. Again, a heartbreaking moment if we assume he is a great guy. How tragic for these two lovers to be looking down the barrel of so much agony (and death!) but unable to embrace just once more. This also leads to a truly horrific nightmare sequence that ROCKED me, but we only see these moments through Karsh’s perspective and we all make great liars of ourselves. Through talks with Terry, we learn that Karsh never met her lead oncologist (who later resurfaces in a truly chaotic 3rd act) because the good doctor and Becca had slept together in college. Surprisingly, her potentially life-saving treatment wasn’t enough to shake him from obsessing over the man that ‘had her body before him’.
” A whirlwind of sex and psychotic ramblings about Russian spies, the Chinese government, and murder…”
But even Terry isn’t free from this vicious cycle of jealous ownership. When she bumps into Karsh while out on a date with his new girlfriend, she immediately sets her sights on him. Even after Maury confesses to her that the AI assistant he built for Karsh (also voiced by Diane Kruger, which adds an interesting wrinkle when analyzing the women in his life) is nothing more than a piece of clever spyware, Terry still makes Karsh a conquest. Seeing him with someone else was all she needed to tip her hand and make Karsh hers, even if (or because!) it meant that Maury would see and hear everything.
Karsh’s girlfriend Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt, Underworld: Awakening) is a deceptively dangerous element in the whole affair. She comes into Karsh’s life as the liaison between him and her dying billionaire husband who is willing to finance an entirely new GraveTech location in Budapest if it means being Shrouded in his homeland. It’s worth noting that this wealthy investor only communicates to Karsh through voice recordings carried by Soo-Min, so he never really meets Mr. Money Bags. Whatever’s actually happening between them, he and Soo-Min quickly begin a romantic relationship after she complains about not being able to have sex with her dying partner.
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